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Spider, New York’s Oldest Cabby, Dies at 94

Johnnie Footman, in a photo taken last month, was a New York City cabdriver for several decades. He died on Tuesday at the age of 94.Credit John McDonagh

It’s the end of the line for New York City cabdriver 016337 – that’s the hack license number of Johnnie Footman, who turned 94 last month and was the oldest licensed yellow-cab driver in the city.

Mr. Footman, who was widely known by his nickname, Spider, died on Tuesday, after several decades of driving a yellow cab in New York, said several friends and his longtime dispatcher, Stanley Wissak, an owner of the 55 Stan cab depot in Long Island City, Queens, where Mr. Footman worked for many years.

“He was here Monday and he died Tuesday,” Mr. Wissak said.

Mr. Footman renewed his hack license last year, and it was valid until its expiration date next February. For the past few years, Mr. Footman worked only a couple of days per week and he had stopped driving a cab in recent months, but he continued to show up most days at the cab depot, which held a birthday party for him last month. Mr. Footman’s cause of death was unclear, but Mr. Wissak and others said his health had recently been declining.

How Mr. Footman became known as Spider is unclear, but those who knew him said he gained it while riding his beloved Harley Davidson in a Harlem motorcycle club. While he no longer climbed behind the wheel of a yellow cab as often, Mr. Footman would still regularly drive to 55 Stan in his aging Chevy Blazer from his apartment on East 119th Street in Manhattan, just to hang around with off-duty cabdrivers and other workers.

“He liked coming around and talking to everyone – it kept him active, and we treated him like he was God,” Mr. Wissak said, adding that Mr. Footman knew the city like the back of his hand, and had countless cab stories, including descriptions of couples having sex in the back seat and accounts of the celebrities he picked up, which included Rock Hudson and John Wayne.

The charismatic Mr. Footman had a preference for cheap cigars and wore a big plastic spider pendant around his neck and a baseball hat with a label that said “Old Dude made of Achey Breaky Parts!” Despite his age, he talked about women with the excitement of an undergraduate during an interview last year at the cab depot.

Mr. Footman, who was slight of build and stood 5 feet 6 inches tall, would slip a stack of folded cardboard and foam on the driver’s seat of his daily rental cab at the beginning of each shift. He boasted a nearly spotless driving record and never had any accidents while working for 55 Stan, Mr. Wissak said. In recent years, he would warn passengers who got in his cab that he drove slowly.

“He just didn’t feel he was safe enough to drive passengers; he was a little unsure of himself,” Mr. Wissak said. In recent years, Mr. Footman complained that passengers complained more while tipping less.

Mr. Footman was born in Lakeland, Fla., and moved to New York to escape the racism of the South, said the filmmaker Joshua Z Weinstein, who featured Mr. Footman in a recent documentary, “Drivers Wanted,” about 55 Stan. The film was screened last Saturday night at the cab depot but Mr. Footman felt too weak to attend, Mr. Weinstein said.

Mr. Footman started his cab career pumping gas, fixing engines and washing cabs for the Terminal Cab company in Hell’s Kitchen, before he obtained his hack license and began driving – from DeSotos and Checkers to Crown Victorias, Mr. Wissak said.

While it was unclear exactly when Mr. Footman first obtained his hack license, David Yassky, the commissioner of the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, said it was “only a few short years” after the modern taxi industry was born in 1937, when the city’s board of aldermen first began limiting the number of hack licenses granted in the city.

“He’ll be missed,” Mr. Yassky said. “He was one of those drivers who knew the streets, knew his cab and knew his passengers, and he balanced all three perfectly.”

A version of this article appears in print on 09/14/2013, on page A15 of the NewYork edition with the headline: A Biker Named Spider Turned Into New York’s Oldest Cabby.

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